Louise Ridley finds out how personal adverts are likely to become
Apart from the occasional drumming gorilla or 'Hello boys' billboard, adverts can
annoying. So annoying chat 73 per cent or web users have left a favouiile website because of intrusive or irritating ads, according to market-research company Opinion Matters. As e've become saturated in sales messages, we've adapted to naturally tune (hem oul. But what if hose messages were created specifically foi you? In September, Google demonstrated technology hat can tailor an online advert to whoever is watching it. It was created by a company called Teracent nd uses artificial intelligence to change an advert in a split- second, tweaking the images, colours and essages, and even what products you see according to factors like your location, language and the ime of day. So instead of "Save money on all our home-improvement products," you could get an ad aying "This is a great weekend to fit that new fence you've been thinking about. We've got fence anels in your favourite shade of burnt sienna." In Tokyo, this kind of hyper-aware ad is already in use. ew facial recognition billboards in Japanese malls analyse your face with a small camera and can dentify your gender, ethnicity and approximate age with aiound 85 per cent accuracy. They scan a ank of profiles and change their display to offer you a product that's likely to tempt you. The creator, lectronics giant NEC, is expected to have test trials in the US before the end of the year. Researchers t IBM in the UKare developing similarly individualised billboards that will identify you through a radio hip that's increasingly being incorporated into credit cards and mobile phones. These radio frequency D (RFID) chips, which are also used in Oyster travel cards on the London Underground, only have a ange of 10cm, so some kind of explicit 'check-in' will be required
for a billboard to know who you are and serve up your bespoke advert.
If you've seen the film Minority Report, this may all sound eerily familiar.
In Steven Spielberg's 2002 vision of the future, Torn Cruise'scharacter, John Anderton, has his rises scanned by billboards that produce customised adverts shouting "lohn Anderton! You
could use a Guinness right about now."
When Spielberg was researching the film, he visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's media lab in search of strange new technologies
that could be used in advertising in 2054. Less than a decade later, personalised advertising is not only here already, but will soon undergo a transformation, probing deeper into our lives than ever before.
Right on target Targeting consumers is big business.
Advertisers have long been able to track what we do online using cookies; small text files with a unique ID that a website can drop on yourcomputer to track what pages you visit. The process has been made even easier by sites like Facebook, which actively encourage us to build a profile listing our personal details as well as categorising our interests - an advertiser's dream.
According to advertising futurist Gerd Leonhard, in around six years we'll be perfectly targetable if we agree to be.
"Most of Hie screens we see will be completely synchronised with our profile.
So when you're on a train platform and look across the track, a screen will be able to give out an ad targeted for you.
The technology's already working, it's just a matter of getting it widely adopted."
The birth of the internet allowed marketers to follow our online movement, but with the exponential growth in smartphone ownership, advertising has a new place in our lives: in our pockets.
In 2013 there will be 1 billion smartphone users worldwide. In lOyears, I .eon hard predicts that 90 per cent of all online advertising will he on mobile devices. In the next few years, we can expect an explosion of location-based advertising, which adds the 'where' to the 'who' through geolocation. "There are specific issues around location that a re very di fferent to shari ng incirienta I details of your life," says digital strategist Kevin Anderson. "Saying'I had porridge for breakfast', the classic example of over sharing, is one thing. Saying'I'm having porridge and I'm at 7 Acton Court'
is completely different. Not everyone is comfortable with that."
Perhaps to overcome (hat discomfort, one of the most popular location-based marketing apps, Foursquare, is a game.
You 'check in' by using your smartphone to reveal your location to the app. As a reward, you get 'badges*. The more often you check in, and the more varied the locations you check in at, the more
badges you get and the more your status increases. As well as badges, you also get special offers exclusive to Foursquare users who check in at certain shops. "A lot of the check-in stuff is to get around limitations in the technology: when all phones know exactly where you are, manual 'check ins' won't be necessary. To me, the funny thing about Foursquare is that the game mechanics are just a mind trick to get you to reveal your location so you can be marketed to," says Anderson.
At the moment, most of us simply aren't aware of how much data our phones semi out. Half of JO randomly selected apps for Android phones send users' private information to remote advertising servers according to researchers from Duke, Intel Labs and Penn Stale University (see 'Watch
This Space', left). Something as simple as changing your phone's background wallpaper could transmit personal data about you, including your location, without your knowledge.
As the 'leaking* of personal information through our phones is researched more, we'll see an increasing trade-off between the amount of data we disclose and the discounts we're offered.
"The process of'opting out' is just being Set up. but ultimately we have all the
power in this relationship because we
are going to bargain with our data," says
futurist Uomhard. "HTML5, the new
standard coding that's starting to roll out
across the web. has controls built into the
browser giving people unprecedented
power to shut advertisers out."
The perceived power of choice
We may gai n control of our data, but
adverts are set to burrow deeper into
our brains by giving us the illusion that
we're in control of them too. Minority
Report's bil Iboards shouted over each
other for attention, but on (he video-on-
demand service Hulu in the US, you can
select what advert you want to watch and
when you want to see it. Google is testing
a similar system for YouTube called
TrueView. "It's a completely deceptive
feeling of consumer empowerment. But it
works," says Anderson.
A website called Hunch could point
towards the future of personalisation.
Relaunched i n Aug use as a' taste-
gtaph-driven recommendation engine',
Hunch aims to personalise the entire
internet and give you ideas of websites
to visit. You log in and answer seemingly
trivial questions, such as "Have you
sworn yet today?" or "Which of these
lettuces would you prefer on a salad?"
After answering 20 you have the option
to stop and see your results. But because
the questions are fun, the average person
answers 120 of them, six times more than
is needed. At the moment Hunch doesn't
make its data available to advertisers, but
they're queuing up to declare interest.
Then there's the London-based start-
up that's about to let advertisers speak to
us in a whole new language. You won't
have heard of Siine - Focus is the first
publication to be given the low down.
Siine has created an add-on for instant-
chat programs like MSN messenger,
Facebook Chat and Skype Chat. Details
are under wraps until the prototype
launches in December, but it's essentially
the first piece of computer software
that's truly semantic. In other words, it
responds to meanings, not through what
keywords we use like Google does, but by
being able to understand the intentions
behind our words.
Siine CEO Ed Maklouf, who studied
group communications at Stanford
University, explains that while the
software is designed to improve
social messaging, commercial
messages sometimes have a place in
our conversations. In those cases,
the software can provide intelligent
commercial suggestions to people while
they're chatting.
"Google delivers you adverts outside
the frame of your chat, noticing you
mentioned 'offices' and asking if you
want to buy some pencils. The area we're
involved in is a couple of steps beyond
that. It's the key difference between an
advert and a suggestion. Rather than
picking up on a keyword and throwing
something at you. a suggestion comes
from someone who is listening attentively
and understands what you want to do."
Siine's software will also recognise the
words you like most and create icons
to represent them, which would allow
advertisers to literally create their own
languages around their products.
Makloufwas invited to speak at this
year's Under The Radar conference in
Silicon Valley, which drew heavyweight
advertisers and agencies like Coca-Cola
and AKQA. When it emerges, the
software could shift advertising away
from a straightforward sales pitch,
by mixing commercial suggestions
with recommendations to go to your
friend's house around the corner.
"The terminology used at the minute
is all about eyeballs and minutes, and
how much prominence a commercial
advert has in people's lives " says
Maklouf. "Our approach is not treat
people asa pair of eyeballswith buying
potential but, instead, create a
technology that occupies the position of a
friendly assistant."
Today's constantly connected, social
internet was unimaginable in the pre-
Facebook era when Minority Report was
made. So what can we expect from an
ad in 2020? Advertisers wil 1 continue to
follow wherever the technology leads,
getting subtly closer to our minds, our
current locations and our wallets, but one
thing is certain - the adverts will be more
targeted than ever before.
